Designing a Friend
by Demyrie
Summary: Why was Carl made? Was he a nanny for Wilbur, or a friend for Cornelius? Little do we know that many people had a hand in making Carl over time: and all of them loved him dearly. Sweetandpointless, CorneliusFranny.


I seriously love this fic XD It's just so… cute and short and clear-minded!

Personally, I adore Carl with a passion. He's so snarky, and I would commit murder for his VA. AWESOME STUFF. So, this is about his creation.

There was a lot of discussion going on at TheRobinsons (lj community—YOU WILL GO NOW.) a while back over WHY Carl was made: was he a nanny for Wilbur? Was he made to help Cornelius design stuff? Was he just a project that evolved over time? This is my kinda-theory on it. It's not real conclusive… but it doesn't have to be!

It's a real… Robinsons-style heart-warmer XD Makes you go AWWWW.

Pairings: Franny/Cornelius

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Designing a Friend

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It was all due to Franny. She made Carl.

No, he built the robot. And yes, of course he _remembered_ Carl. How could he forget? But he remembered Carl as a _person_, as a bright metallic glint of unlimited succor and tongue-in-cheek jabs. The serpentine waggling of his retractable limbs migrated to the back of Lewis' mind: to him, he might well have been human. And where do you start building when one of your prophesied creations is as real to you as your own family?

He knew the design well enough—ball joint shoulders, long arms and a swagger. But you couldn't program a swagger. You can't _design_ a friend! It would be like trying to engineer a real human child, orchestrating every stage of his or her life to yield a certain result! He had no idea what Carl would mean to him in the future, or what he would need to be able to do: the memory of him was imposing enough. What did he start out as? How would he grow? How could he create something so multi-layered, so perfect, so sarcastic, so… _very Carl_? It couldn't be anything, _anyone _but Carl!

How could he make sure that his robot friend turned out _just_ right if he didn't know the groundwork of him?

In these perilous stages, the slightest change in base components could send things in an entirely new direction. But Cornelius had to make him. But he was so afraid of messing up. Such a dilemma found the future founder of Robinson Industries worked into a corner (both figuratively and literally), tapping his pencil on the edge of his desk. A robotic husk was draped against a nearby machine, and had been the subject of several of the young man's dubious glances for hours now. He just didn't know where to go next.

The young woman beside him didn't know either, but that didn't stop her from raising her voice.

"Cornelius!"

It took Franny several tries to make the spacey teenager realize that she, the ultimate love of his life who currently smelt a good deal like pond-scum but knew he wouldn't mention it, had been looming over his shoulder for a good ten minutes. When Cornelius looked up and out of his little canister of lamplight, he jerked up straight and fumbled his pencil. It tumbled off the desk and rolled toward the robotic husk; he followed it to its resting place with guilty, avid eyes, then looked up into his girlfriend's expectant face.

"Franny!" He exclaimed, needlessly. She, knowing full well that his thoughts were more scattered than… anything, let him have a moment: basic responses like breathing and eye-contact returned to him shortly. He put his hands in his lap and smiled sheepishly. She sighed.

"Mr. Robinson, what have I told you about this?"

She had taken to calling him Mr. Robinson when annoyed: the newspapers, at the ridiculous age of 16, had begun choking him with respect due to his recent influx of patented projects at Invent-co. Hordes of reporters sang the rising genius' praises, and Cornelius always had the overwhelming conviction that respectable older people were always a bit confused to see his own long-nosed, teenage face grinning above the name of the exalted Mr. Robinson. They just didn't seem to match: he didn't like the formality, and said so to Franny one day.

She, having no shame but rather acute knowledge of teenage relationships, quickly internalized the information and utilized it to insure that when she wasn't happy, at least he was annoyed.

Far from returning the jab, Cornelius simply smiled at her. This was not an interruption: it was a welcome respite from apprehensive gambles of time-space-continuity and very dear robot companions.

"Not to do it?" He answered hopefully. Her frown slid into a smirk, as did his boyish smile when she tipped forward and kissed him on the forehead, settling herself casually on his lap.

"You are amazing," she whispered in a tone that wasn't quite reverent, but rather teasing. "You've been in here for two days, you know."

A kiss on his cheek followed the first, and he soaked in her vibrant energy, letting out a breath he'd been saving for the past hour.

"I haven't missed anything important, have I?" He asked as a matter of course; he was not a negligent person, but his passions made it hard to keep track of time. Franny shook her head.

"Nope. Lucille and Bud—"

"Mom and dad," Cornelius corrected with a smile, never wavering when Franny playfully stared him down.

"Mommy and daddy are doing just fine on their own," she insisted, bopping him on the nose. "It's just late. They think Uncle Fritz should be back soon to take the kids, so I thought I'd come up and check on you."

She got up and straightened her acid-green dress, looking around.

"What are you working on?"

His face fell an inch when her bright brown eyes skipped over the abandoned, long-legged project on the ground. As though it weren't worth seeing, he supposed. He pointed his finger at it.

"That."

It didn't deserve a name yet. He didn't want to presume too much, and insult Carl's chances at existing. Right now it was just a robot, and Franny turned to look at it with interest, unpromising as it was.

"Hmm."

She made a low sound, bending to trace a delicate musician's finger over the droid's deadpan, flat-lipped face.

"It looks so sad," she said after a moment.

"I didn't make it that way." Cornelius said, slightly startled. It was if the robot had decided to be sad all on its own: perhaps it was possible, knowing what it could never live up to. It did look a little melancholy with its lidded eyes and vacant face, now that he thought of it. He watched, mouth slightly open, as Franny made her way around the limp little creation, heels tapping thoughtfully on the linoleum.

"Does it have a name?"

Franny always asked things like that—but rarely did it make Cornelius wince like it did then.

"N-no," he mumbled. Then, remedied it at her disapproving silence: "Not yet."

Suddenly decisive, Franny walked to his desk and plucked up a marker. She gestured airily with it: he nodded, slightly lost. Then she retreated back to not-Carl and his dull iron countenance, and simply stood there, head cocked. Eventually, as stars began appearing above his head, Cornelius turned back to his blueprints. Normally he would watch _anybody_ very, very closely around _anything_ in his lab: but his trust for Franny was such that it seemed ridiculous to monitor her.

A few rodent-like squeaks of a marker went unnoticed by Cornelius, once more fully immersed in his dilemma.

He was trapped in a warped paradox: that of creating his desired future by acting naturally when clearly the scene needed more help than that. _He_ needed help. He desperately wanted to see Wilbur—his best friend hadn't showed up in weeks, and he was fearful that it would be a while yet before he saw the Robinson's confident smirk—to ask him about any benchmarks in Carl's creation. He wanted to cheat, really. He tore his mind apart, fists pressed to either temple.

He could move on to another project, certainly. But it just seemed so, so important: Cornelius wanted to make Carl, now. Nothing else would do.

When he finally looked up, it was hours later. Knowing his moods, Franny had drifted out like a will-o-the-wisp and the lab was entirely doused in tangible navy shadows. Squinting outside the yellow, curtain-like separation of lamplight again, his eyes fell on his utter failure, and, after a moment of uncomprehending staring, he saw where the marker had gone.

The robot's face had an unsettling duality to it, original features sitting cold and stringent beneath the comical face Franny had penned over it. She had alerted the dull eyes to his presence by drawing in pupils swiveled in his direction-- looking at him—and a wide, smiling mouth. The bolt between its eyes she replaced with a chunky jack-o-lantern nose. At first, Cornelius was stunned at what had moved Franny to draw all over his latest project.

Then, he was stunned at the utter familiarity of the face smiling back at him, immobile and patient. As if saying, yes: I was waiting for you all along.

Suddenly numb and almost shaking, Cornelius picked himself up from his chair and made his way over to his creation—then, with a small, reverent sound, dropped to his knees in-between its skewed, inelastic legs. His body tingled as blood returned to it, the sensation doubling when he realized he could blot out the robot's iron-hewn face and just focus on the lines. He crossed his eyes somewhat: it worked. His heart leapt.

Pressing an ink-blotched hand to the chill metal of its chest, he smiled to the robot. Introducing himself.

"Carl," he said aloud, and in a single, beautiful moment, his mind cleared.

The next few hours were a blur, filled with the toxic light of blow-torches and sputtering lamp bulbs. Dawn arrived readily, shining at his huge windows. Cornelius burst out of his lab with a cry of victory, motoring down the stairs to snatch a piece of toast, kiss his mother, hug his father, pat his cousins on their little red heads and chatter his way out before breaking into an off-key rendition of 'Sugar and Spice'.

Lucille and Bud stared at each other until, a few moments later, a door slammed shut across the house—then they smiled, kissed one another, and turned to serve breakfast to Fritz's little Lazlo and Tallulah, who were currently strangling one another with a determination not usually found in three- and six-year-olds.

Back up in his lab, work area doused in warm yellow sunlight, Cornelius smiled in simple, robust pleasure as he rearranged the wires poking out of Carl's open chest with an artist's precision, eyes flickering up every so often to reclaim and reaffirm the memory of that marker-streaked face. His friend's face.

Carl would grow into himself, with the help of the family. That much was certain. He would grow and eclipse task after task, evolving to fit needs and fancies until suddenly, surely, he could do anything for anyone at all. He would become irreplaceable.

One by one, they would all make him into a friend.


End file.
